


Her soul and her role

by RobinWritesChirps



Category: Black Friday - Team StarKid
Genre: Alternate Reality, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Found Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mother-Daughter Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:01:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24325459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobinWritesChirps/pseuds/RobinWritesChirps
Summary: Tom has started to recreate something of a family, crossed paths with Becky again, took in the Foster girls, but the haunting past is still heavy on his shoulders and something is still missing. Or perhaps someone.Snapshot of the first time Tom truly let Emma in his life again, from Becky’s (cautiously respectful) point of view. No Wiggly AU.
Relationships: Becky Barnes & Lex Foster, Becky Barnes/Tom Houston
Comments: 30
Kudos: 30





	Her soul and her role

Tom and Becky bared their souls to each other before anyone else, and their deepest secrets belonged only to the other, if at all. The burden was somewhat lifted from their shoulders the more they shared it and they lived and breathed easier with the knowledge that their well-being was in the other’s good hands. Two, four hands wasn’t enough, though. Maybe nothing would ever be enough to fully mend their hearts, but walking the path towards it was all they could do. These days, happiness seemed ever more within their reach in a way Becky had never foreseen for herself, or for her family.

The kids went to therapy first. At Becky’s suggestion, Tim started to see someone when she became a part of Tom’s life again and the boy was livelier and happier for it, the change much smoother when there was someone he could confide in about it outside the very people involved. The girls too had more than needed the help when they joined the household and finally, Becky timidly asked Tom if this road wouldn’t also be alright for themselves. To her surprise, he readily agreed and soon they were both seeing their own therapist every week. It was odd to open up her heart to someone else, to anyone at all who wasn’t Tom, and odder still to know that any work she could achieve with her therapist was always to be barred by the very clear cut line of what she couldn’t unveil, that terrible night she bloodied her hands and her conscience.

It wasn’t for nothing, though. It wasn’t all in vain and she only had to reflect on the changes in Tom to notice the ones in her own heart, too. He smiled more, she apologized less. She was more sincere, more cheerful, he was less withdrawn, more open. A series of small adjustments to their inner workings amounted to bigger changes in their outer demeanors and after merely a few sessions, Tom announced his decision to invite Emma over for a family sit down heart-to-heart about Jane.

"I’ll call her," he said, her gruff lover who had never cared for phone calls, not in their youth and certainly not now.

Often, Becky volunteered herself when she knew he was avoiding a call for too long, but this one wasn’t hers to make. Tom closed the door to their bedroom to call Emma with all the privacy needed anyways, and after a few minutes came out and talked about something else entirely. Becky gladly followed suit. Tom marked the date of Emma’s visit on their calendar on the fridge door and nothing more was said about it till the day arrived.

"Aunt Emma’s here!" Tim cried out excitedly when he spotted her car out on the street.

Emma was a favorite of his, had always been. Even Lex was all smitten by her, bold and blunt as she could be. She often visited her newly-thus-established Aunt Emma and Becky closed her eyes and her nostrils to whatever her semi-frequent hangouts there might entail for the sake of Tom’s peace of mind. Hannah liked Emma well enough too, though Becky felt some shameful guilt at noting how much more she liked her and especially Tom. Hannah thrived on routine, on the security that every night and morning, she had the two-ish adults in her life to protect and guide her. Emma was not familiar enough to fully earn the girl’s trust and comfort. Perhaps not yet.

"I’ll open the door," Tim said, rushing to the entrance room. "Hey, Aunt Emma!"

Emma shared smiles and secret handshakes with him, greeted Tom and Lex warmly before her eyes met with Becky’s. They stared at each other for a few seconds before both of them looked away and muttered greetings much more awkwardly than Becky had hoped. Tom glanced between the two of them and gave Becky an apologetic shrug before inviting Emma to sit with him on the sofas. Tim rushed to grab snacks and drinks, beaming so bright with excitement it was odd to think that the afternoon was to be spent mourning and honoring his late mother. Tom and especially Emma were a lot less frantic though, Becky reflected, perhaps the gloom in Emma’s gaze was partly to do with her presence here too.

It wasn’t that Becky hated Emma. The opposite had been true for many, many years and she had no evidence to believe that things had changed on that front, no matter how much everything else had. A clash of characters, of worldviews probably, but all that was mindless bickering compared to the much larger, bothering truth that Becky would always be the other woman in her eyes. It was an unease that she might never move on from. Becky had come before Jane, and she had come after her too, an even greater offense. That presence, that second chance and whatever affection had lingered in Tom’s heart in the years in between would always be an item of resentment, she knew. Today wasn’t about her, though, not even a little bit, and she decided then and there to keep strictly to herself and not to meddle with their guest. In fact, she would not even enter that room at all.

"Hey, Beck."

Becky startled and realized she had been staring blankly at her hands, sitting unmoving at the kitchen table. She blinked and looked up at Lex standing in the doorway, tried to smile.

"Yes, sweetie?"

Lex was nineteen and rougher than rough around the edges, yet in the privacy of their home and especially when no one else was around, she was as sweet as pie and Becky made sure to cherish that. It was hard to suddenly become someone’s mother figure, and at the same time not hard at all when it came to the girls. Lex was brash, bordering on outright rude at times, but she was passionate, loving, and when she found it in her heart to care about someone or something, she did so deeply and unwaveringly. Becky was flattered to be counted among such people.

"I gotta go to the store," Lex said, "To buy some shit. Wanna come with?"

"Language," Becky chided softly, which made Lex smirk − as if such scolding ever worked, especially not with Tom’s leading bad example. "What do you need to buy?"

Lex’s confidence wavered just a little, enough for Becky to see through the pretense that no such trip was exactly needed. Still, as she heard Tom and Emma awkwardly engage the conversation in the next room, she was reminded again of just how little her presence here was required or wanted. Lex’s company and especially a change of scenery would do her much good.

"Stuff," Lex replied with perfectly faked assurance. "Dinner and everything, maybe something for Hannah. You wanna come with?"

Just on the other side, Tom let out a chuckle at something Tim had said and Becky nodded.

"We’ll get something special for dinner," she decided. "And the rest of the weekend."

She stood, grabbing her jacket, her keys on her way out. Tom noticed her pass the room, but said nothing. Tim looked at them a little more curious.

"I’m, erm, Lex and I are gonna run some errands."

Lex wrapped her arm around Becky’s shoulders, smiling at the little group of Perkins and Houstons.

"I’m taking the lady out," she said smugly.

Emma snorted and served herself to some snacks, though she thankfully didn’t look up to see Tom’s glare. He turned to Becky, smiled encouragingly.

"Alright," he said. "See you later then, babe… erm… Becky…"

She was babe most days, Becky with friends and family, Rebecca Barnes on her license. In this moment, she would settle for anything.

"Later," she said with a little wave.

Lex drove them to the store. Tom had taught her how to drive, Becky had taught her how to drive well, and her newly learned skills were constantly honed and bettered as Becky freely gave her the wheel whenever they went anywhere together. These days, they went together loads of places, every day deepening the bond between each other. Becky had never had children, yet now that three were under her care, she felt like all her life had made her into who she was for this sole purpose. It was an odd thing, to love and care for grateful people who repaid her attentions tenfold every day. Lex gave her the gift of a silent ride to the store, only occasional smiles in the rearview mirror, and Becky was the one who was grateful.

"Nice parking job," Becky said somewhat teasingly at Lex’s crooked attempt at parking.

"Oh, hush," she retorted, laughing but already pulling back to correct the trajectory, "No one’s around."

The parking was much straighter after the second try.

" _I_ am around," Becky noted.

"Yeah, and you’re an angel who would never dare to make her poor astray teenage foster kid self-conscious."

Becky looked at her as they left the car and when Lex passed her the keys back, she kept their hands together for a moment. Her thumb stroked against Lex’s palm.

"That’s not how I think of you," she said softly, "And you know that."

Lex shrugged. Affection often rolled off on the shell of her snark like droplets of water, but sometimes it did pierce through. More and more often, in fact. They shared a smile and grabbed a cart to push around inside.

Becky tried not to think of what was being said in her absence at home, she truly did. She had never really known Jane and Tom rarely spoke of her in her presence. Of the two sisters, Emma was the one she had been around and even that had been years ago and not in the best of terms to say the least. She had spotted Tim’s name in passing at the hospital for checkups a few times but she had never been around to see him before that one fateful time she had caught up with Tom − and that had been after his wife’s passing. Jane was at home every day in the smile of his son, or on a few photos Tom had brought out after too many months of hiding them away, she was kept and treasured in a deeper part of his heart than met the eye, but ghosts did not speak and Becky had but a vague idea of the shape of her character. Maybe it was better she did not know who it really was who had given Tom a marriage, a family all those years she had longed for him. Maybe it was for the best to not know the woman whose husband she now loved and adored, and had loved all along.

"How’d you two meet?" Lex asked suddenly.

Becky looked up from the cart, pulled from her melancholy.

"Mmh?"

Lex smiled with a rare softness.

"You and Tom," she said. "How’d you get together? The first time, I mean. Tim never shuts up about the second time."

Becky paused. So many fond memories she had constantly reminisced all those years they’d been apart. Even between the two of them, Tom and Becky often thought back with tenderness on those happy years they had shared before everything went wrong. Maybe such moments of exchanging old memories were more private than they had thought, never overheard by any of the kids.

"He’s never told you?"

Lex shook her head. Becky suspected that she might be indulging her a little. Tom had a soft spot for the girls and she couldn’t imagine he had never told them the story, but if asked, she would tell the tale herself.

"It was cute," she said, already smiling. She could still see Tom’s youthful bright face, the look in his eyes, how pink he flushed whenever she talked to him back then. "His locker was next to mine."

"… Cute, sure…"

Slowly, they were making their way through the shop, grabbing stuff as they went. Lex and Hannah were no longer guests in the house, not since it had been decided that they belonged there for good. They were a family, with all that could entail and no matter what Tom’s family had used to look like. Chores and errands and everything to do with the running of the home were shared with the Fosters and their lives were bound together in all ways. Even in such mundane boring tasks as groceries for dinner, they flowed well together. She loved Tom and Tim, she loved Lex and Hannah, she loved the way all five of them had adapted to one another since their lives had become intertwined. She thought only of their present and future for fear of remembering the past, but the more distant past was bearable, even delightful.

"It was," she nodded. "He used to hold my books for me when I switched them out during the day. He’d wait for me in the hall − he never used his locker except for his football things, and… Oh, it’s silly."

Lex seemed to smell the scent of something ludicrous and she poked Becky’s shoulder to prompt her on. Becky huffed, but spoke.

"He left me notes a lot. At first, they weren’t signed and I didn’t have any class with him to know his handwriting so I could just hope they were from him, and then one day I caught him slipping one inside my locker when he thought I wasn’t there."

Lex laughed, grabbing the cart from her hands to park it much more neatly than she had the car while Becky searched an aisle for what she was looking for. Maybe dessert tonight. She had no idea what sweet things Emma liked, if any. She did not think Tom knew either. Emma had very rarely visited since Jane’s passing, and even more rarely in good terms.

"Smooth as fuck," Lex said and Becky could see from the glint in her eyes that the confession would be used and abused against poor Tom. "What’d he write?"

Just thinking back on those days made Becky feel much more warm, more content already. Their crushes had been so foolishly intense back then, the only thing that mattered in their much smaller world, the highlight of every day. She had kept all the notes for a long time until Stanley had thrown away her Tom box when she had failed to hide it well enough. Stanley had tried to squash so much of the part of Becky that belonged to Tom, and even more the part of Becky that belonged solely to herself, but he had not, not all of it. Her memories would remain intact the rest of her life, the ones they kept creating every day spent together, but definitely always the ones from high school as well.

"If you must know," she said pointedly, "He wrote that I was super nice and that he liked my voice and my hair."

Lex snickered tauntingly and Becky knew for sure that the explanation had not at all lessened the future temptation for bullying her dear Tom. Not today, most likely, and for sure not in front of Emma, but he probably had it coming sooner or later. So it was, she thought. She would always be there to soothe his bruised ego, even from their beloved older foster child. Presently, Lex was stroking a strand of her hair softly as if ascertaining if the compliment had truly been earned.

"Nice," she said eventually. "Poetic. Complex. Love it."

Becky giggled quietly.

"Did he like, add boxes for you to check if you wanted to be his girlfriend, or… ?"

They were nearing the end of their errands, enough to feed the crew for a few days and Emma in addition tonight. Becky found that she had no desire to go home just now. She slowed down the pace a little.

"It was high school, not elementary," she said, shaking her head with a tssk. "No, I never told him I had seen it was him who put the note there. We didn’t date for another couple of months. I just smiled into my pillow all night."

"What?!"

If she had known all the things to come, then Becky might have been bolder back then. She might have slipped a hundred notes in his locker too, she might have grabbed him and kissed him right against it from the start. She might have cherished those precious few years much more, loving Tom better right from the start and never letting him go. If she had known, then she would not be here in this store to tell the tale of having loved him before she lost him.

"We were so young," she said, a little wistful. "We were shy, at least at first. Then we got to know each other a little bit more with football and everything, we spent some time together, and it just became… easier. Inevitable."

Lex was looking at her much more earnestly. She wasn’t quite smiling, but Becky saw in her gaze that the story wasn’t quite as ridiculous as she had expected. In her own mind, it never had been, not after many years of polishing and refining the memories, of reliving them in every free moment with herself, commutes and showers and insomnia. In her mind, the way she had loved Tom the first time was the way she ought to have always loved him. Of course, it was better now, it was deeper, but at what cost in between?

"It was at some party," she reminisced. "We were both invited but, you know Tom…"

"Not a party guy."

"Not a party guy," she smiled. "We stayed outside away from the party, just the two of us, we kissed, it was really sweet. The next day I asked him out."

"And the rest is history, huh?"

Becky smiled, a little sad.

"We made sense."

Lex was pushing the cart to the register, grabbing herself some snacks on the way that Tom definitely would not have approved of.

"You _make_ sense," she said. "He… he lights up around you. You know that, right?"

Becky could not know that, of course, not considering she had no way of knowing how it was that Tom acted around others. It wasn’t that he was always all sunshine around her either, but if he felt even a fraction of the relief that took over her every time she was with him, then lighting up was only the beginning of it. She was soothed by him, she was healed.

"I only wish…"

But she shook her head. Lex did not press her any further and they did not exchange a word until they were out of the store and the groceries had been put away in the trunk. Only then, she pressed her hands on Becky’s shoulders, rubbed gently.

"Let’s get you an ice cream."

Becky might have laughed. Lex took the keys from her hands again, sat at the driver’s seat without even asking.

"You’re not my mom," Becky protested in a faked childish voice as she sat next to her. "Fine, but I’ll pay."

Lex was already driving into traffic − she drove much more safely than she pretended, and safer yet when Tom was in the car.

"Fine with me," she said.

They never spoke about Jane, not once in the whole afternoon they spent together. Becky was asked more details about their days in high school, football and prom and everything − up to a certain level of decency, of course. She was more than happy to provide. Lex asked no question about the separation and especially not about the years that had followed, the terrible years of Stanley. If she could avoid it, then Becky was just as glad never to speak about that time.

Lex knew some of it. Not that night in the woods, not the weight of her guilt, but she knew what kind of marriage Becky had had. Her therapist knew just about the same extent and already letting out that part of the story, even though it was hardly the whole truth, was a relief. Only Tom would ever know all of it and that, perhaps, made the most sense of all. Without him, she never would have done it. With him, if she had had him all along, she wouldn’t have either. It only made sense that she would need him to atone her guilt. In all ways, her fate was welded with his, Stanley’s death always dependent on Jane’s, her healing on Tom’s. She had loved him once, twice. It sometimes felt like their love was independent from time and space but a simple fact about herself, about him, and universally imbuing her life from start to finish.

They came back a few hours later to an animated friendly family chat right at home too. Tim was telling a story to Emma, gesticulating excitedly, and she was smiling down at him with a particular fondness Becky had never quite seen on her. Hannah had showed her face downstairs and was now cuddling with Tom on his armchair, who was petting her hair quietly. Lex made her way to them and, from behind, muttered something in Tom’s ear who immediately apologized to Hannah and stood up, leaving Lex to take over the embrace with her sister.

"I’ll help you," he told Becky, grabbing the grocery bags from her arms.

At first, they said nothing, timid smiles as they worked around one another putting away everything. Tom made the first move, which was a kiss against her cheek as he passed next to her to open the fridge. Becky smiled, touching her cheek where he had kissed it.

"Do you want me to make dinner?" He asked. "You can relax, hang out."

Becky had relaxed plenty enough with Lex. In the other room, the kids were all covering each other’s voices trying to tell a different version of the same events to Emma, who was on her own to parse the truth for herself. Becky shook her head.

"Let’s make it together."

Emma stayed for dinner, of course. She even addressed some words to Becky, and not even terse or cold. Tim was in an exceptional mood, even more affectionate than his usual cheerful self, and Becky was the recipient of several hugs during the night which she very readily repaid. Tom was perhaps even kinder, not nearly as loquacious but all night exchanging smiles with her, his hand on her lap rubbing gentle circles until Becky covered it with her own. Lex had caught Emma’s attention, perhaps to drive it away from Becky, and Tim and Hannah were discussing all so unimportantly important debates in the way only children ever could.

It was, if for a subtle aftertaste of awkwardness, a good night together. What had been said when she was gone, she didn’t need to know, just like there was no need to share what Lex and her had been up to. Here in this house or out together or anywhere at all, they had all the freedom in the world to reminisce on the good times and the hard times, and the times that were a little bit of both. And if not all of it was to be shared between every single person, that did not matter after all. All that counted, Becky thought, was the affection that united them and their family.

Eventually, Tim waved Aunt Emma goodnight from the front door and hugged Tom so very tight when she was gone, and then Becky and the girls too. Just like every night, he was sent to bed, except tonight he climbed upstairs without any protest, as did the girls. Lex took too long in the shower − that was just like every night too − before joining Hannah in the room that had used to be a home office but was now refurbished and theirs. When they were on their own, Tom kissed Becky with the same love as he had that first time all those years ago in high school and Becky had no doubt that, no matter the shadows of the past, no matter how unpredictable the future, what they had right here under this roof was a loving family and it was more than enough. And that was simply the best path to healing at all.

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT IF YOU’VE READ THIS, I FUCKING BEG YOU, PLEASE


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